Trek has now two belt drive bikes

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Originally Posted By: tom slick
I'm curious how they tension and maintain tension on the belts. cogged belts must have fairly high tension by design. a little looseness and they start skipping.

I like the bikes.


Tom, the good belts stretch very little. Harley does with no tensioner and I believe infrequent adjustments. They are adjusted like any other motorcycle or bicycle chain, just less often.
 
Originally Posted By: tom slick
I'm curious how they tension and maintain tension on the belts. cogged belts must have fairly high tension by design. a little looseness and they start skipping.

I like the bikes.

I found this one pic showing a cam system in the back hub axle area. I guess the normal motorcycle chain/belt tensioning system might not work so well with quick release? I'd want to have an easily resetable, releasable tension system to get the back wheel off in a reasonable amount of time.
TBbeltedcrosser3-850-65.jpg

This one doesn't look very quick releasable. The trek one looks like a typical motorbike tension system.
Anyways, it doesn't seem to be an offroad technology just yet. I also wonder how much tension they can handle? 800 lb peaks would be achievable by someone really wanting go from a slow start, especially on single speeds.
Ian
 
Originally Posted By: moribundman
They won't reveal proprietary information.

Do you design Microsoft software for a living?

How the tension system works will be proprietary for about 10 seconds until you walk up and look at it... Or maybe take it apart in the case of the cam system, although I think I know how cam works. That is one of the great things I like about bikes, simple, exposed mechanical systems.
Ian
 
Originally Posted By: XS650
Tom, the good belts stretch very little. Harley does with no tensioner and I believe infrequent adjustments. They are adjusted like any other motorcycle or bicycle chain, just less often.


What I meant to convey is "how does the initial tensioning happen". I figured it out, they use a complicated multi-piece drop out.

I like the eccentric Ian posted.
 
Originally Posted By: IndyIan
Originally Posted By: moribundman
They won't reveal proprietary information.

Do you design Microsoft software for a living?

How the tension system works will be proprietary for about 10 seconds until you walk up and look at it... Or maybe take it apart in the case of the cam system, although I think I know how cam works. That is one of the great things I like about bikes, simple, exposed mechanical systems.
Ian


Do you misinterpret everything I write on purpose? Do you not recognize a snarky comment when you stumble over one?

Trek is not explaining their system in detail on their Web site. You have to look at the mechanics of the setup yourself -- which is what you also concluded cleverly.
 
Originally Posted By: XS650
Originally Posted By: tom slick
I'm curious how they tension and maintain tension on the belts. cogged belts must have fairly high tension by design. a little looseness and they start skipping.

I like the bikes.


Tom, the good belts stretch very little. Harley does with no tensioner and I believe infrequent adjustments. They are adjusted like any other motorcycle or bicycle chain, just less often.


We run various brands of cog belts in the sawmill business; they truly do have some nice advantages over chain in certain applications. And they don't stretch anywhere near as much as a chain (which doesn't actually stretch but they do get longer as they wear).

I like the idea of a cog belt on a bike.
Joe
 
The frame I'm picking up has an eccentric bottom bracket for tensioning the chain on a singlespeeder. That would work for that cog belt as well.
 
Originally Posted By: NYEngineer
The frame I'm picking up has an eccentric bottom bracket for tensioning the chain on a singlespeeder. That would work for that cog belt as well.

Hmmm, thats an interesting way to do it. I guess you can still use your quick release? Most rear drop out are vertical I guess but you might not be able to get the axle in with the pretension than a belt would need?
Ian
 
Originally Posted By: NYEngineer
The frame I'm picking up has an eccentric bottom bracket for tensioning the chain on a singlespeeder. That would work for that cog belt as well.


One could possibly install a heel-activated, geared bottom bracket (Schlumpf Mountain or Speed Drive).
 
I'm not sure the eccentric bottom bracket is something new. I almost sure I've seen that on some pretty old bike before.
 
Originally Posted By: NYEngineer
http://www.cannondale.com/bikes/08/cusa/model-8FS291.html

Scroll down a little to see the bottom bracket.

You can find the user manual on the site for it as well. Kinda neat.
I can't say I have much interest in a single speed bike or owning any cannondale but its neat to see what they put out there. My main question is does it stand up heavy loads? Creaky conventional bottom brackets are still a pain...
Ian
 
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